In late 2004, the Consultative Board to the WTO Director General issued its report, ‘The Future of the WTO: Addressing the Institutional Challenges in the New Millennium’. As noted by the Director General in the foreword, a rationale for the report was that ‘there had been too little serious thinking on whether the institutional design and practice that had served the GATT so well would do the same for the WTO’. One of the specific questions raised was ‘Could the WTO with an enlarged membership at various levels of development continue to deliver results?’ (p. 2). The following reflection on the Consultative Board's report is motivated by the latter question, where ‘results’ is defined as promoting not just global economic welfare, but the development prospects of poor members.